This War of Mine: Stories - The Last Broadcast

I was really looking forward to play "The Last Broadcast" and this story fully justified my expectations. There aren't that many new mechanincs, but there are a few small additions that i found interesting (e.g.. dialogue button). There were plenty hard decisions to make and it is great. Pros: A great and relatively long story with hours of gameplay(took ~4 hours for me); all the great features from the base game; simple, but effective broadcast mechanic. Cons: sometimes dialogues between characters are unskippable, so you end up sitting in front of the screen waiting +-10-15 seconds for character line in dialogue to end. I don't know if it's a technical issue or a "feature", but i hope that this problem won't exist in the last story. Is the truth always worth it...?

The Last Broadcast is more than 4 hours long (in comparison to 3 hours long Father's Promise) and much less railroady. It contains more classic TWOM experience than previous DLC but has more choices, dialogue and story. The story is solid and overall experience is worth it, however there is a lot of lost potential here. There are few problems with decisions in this dlc. There are two sides of the conflict - military and rebels, but military is clearly evil and rebels are good guys. By our actions we can only anger militry by exposing their crimes or sabotaging their moves, There are multiple choices, but they can be summarised as safety vs damage to hated military or help to people opressed by it, so saving our skin or making positive change to world. There is only one choice when there are other reasons than threat stopping us from broadcasting and they aren't very solid in my opinion. The great missed opportunity are relations with rebels, we never broadcast about their actions and they never do anything wrong. It would be much better if conflict was not black and white. In that case the choices would not be only about sacrificing truth for safety, but also for victory over enemy. It would be much more interesting. There are choices in this DLC, but they don't have lots of depth. I wrote a lot about lost opportunities, but this is still a very good DLC with some memorable and emotional moments and I really enjoyed playing it. But I would be really happy to see in the future DLC with more interesting and less obvious choices that have bigger impact on the game world.

I love TWOM. And found the first story (Father's Promise) as disturbing for the twist at the end, as it was urgent. There was always the pressure to "must go there tonight". In Last Broadcast, there isn't much urgency. You are under no obligation to press on with anything. There's sometimes an additional "discuss" interaction button with people at night, and you get to choose what to broadcast. (Hint: the conversations take ages, and it guzzles game time. But you don't have to wait for it. You can click either mouse button to speed on to the next speech balloon, to hustle it along at the pace you can read.) At the risk of hints of spoilers, the wife heads out to places at night, (usual scavenging routine), but with the possibility of encountering things of "newsworthy" content. She is then sometimes faced with a "dilemma" of what to tell her disabled husband. He's the one that lives for the radio, both listening via headphones, and broadcasting "news statements". He is limited to one floor of the large radio station, so plan the house develpment accordingly. For me, the game ended at day 19. Not quite when expected, because there is a further twist and extension, that adds a few more days. But the "game-ending" trigger was Night 14 for me. I went back to try the other wife option. Hated how that felt, especially for the comments hubby made. Worst of all, it STILL ended. There is a way to prolong things. The wife must choose what to tell her husband. But the EXTRA option, is that the husband chooses whether to broadcast, or not. He can only report the story his wife told him, but he can also choose to stay silent. (I suggest copying the "iPhoneDefUser" savegame location every couple of days, in case you want to change your mind - alt-tab to windows without quitting, for a quick "backup copy" of the last two daily savegames) I can go back and try not broadcasting at all. Might get more gameplay. I mean, I didn't even get to visit all locations!

My favourite of the three storylines. I personally enjoyed a lot that you had to make deliberate decisions between what you feel is right in the face of war crimes and your own safety. I chose defiance, and it hurt, but I'd do it again. I also liked the dynamic of the protagonist couple, they were very endearing and didn't feel like stereotypical "strong husband and overly tender caring wife". They both had something tender and caring to them, and she had a rather strong character and was the one who was physically more able. It's refreshing